Brought back from the brink of death and separated from his son, archaeologist James Enoch finds himself forcibly conscripted into a mission that has taken him six lightyears from Earth. Lania Surkov, the crew's lead engineer, wants nothing more than to finish her job and repair her tarnished standing with the Terran Coalition. After a series of critical failures, they find themselves at the center of an interplanetary conflict that will not only decide their fates, but the very fate of humanity's future as a galactic civilization.